Since paying for therapeutic treatments like residential treatment, intensive outpatient program and therapeutic boarding school with insurance is a big topic we’ve broken this into a few different posts. Today, we’re starting with the basics of the health care act that tightens up the requirements for insurers. Historically, insurance paid for outpatient services and residential treatment was only for more affluent families. But thanks to the mental health parity act, insurers are not more responsible than ever for paying for higher levels of care.
What’s the Mental Health Parity Act?
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) requires many insurance plans that cover mental health or substance use disorders to pay for coverage for those services that are no more restrictive than the coverage for medical/surgical conditions. Basically, if they pay for medical stuff, they have to pay for mental health and substance abuse stuff – that’s the ‘parity’ part.
What Does it Cover?
- Copays, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket maximums
- Limitations on services utilization, such as limits on the number of inpatient days or outpatient visits covered
- Coverage for out-of-network providers
- Criteria for medical necessity determinations
MHPAEA does not require insurance plans to offer coverage for mental illnesses or substance use disorders in general, or for any specific mental illness or substance use disorder. It also does not require plans to offer coverage for specific treatments or services for mental illness and substance use disorders. However, coverage that insurance plans do offer for mental and substance use disorders must be provided at parity (the same) with coverage for medical/surgical health conditions.
The original MHPAEA was enacted in October of 2008. The main purpose of MHPAEA was to fill the loopholes left by the previous Mental Health Parity Act was legislation signed into law on September 26, 1996 that requires that annual or lifetime dollar limits on mental health benefits be no lower than any such dollar limits for medical benefits offered by a group health plan.
What if My Plan is Not in Compliance?
Before escalating things and contacting state or federal officials, contact Fonthill to see how to ‘encourage’ the insurers to provide appropriate coverage (look for future blog posts on how to communicate and educate your insurers for coverage). If you still have concerns about your plan’s compliance with MHPAEA, you can contact the Feds or your State Department of Insurance. You can contact the Department of Labor at 1-866-444-3272 or http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/contactEBSA/consumerassistance.html. You can also contact the Department of HHS at 1-877-267-2323 ext 61565 or at phig@cms.hhs.gov or your State Department of Insurance at http://naic.org/.
Check back next time when we explore some tricks to getting insurance to pay for treatment – it’s what the insurance companies don’t want you to know.